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Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

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Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#121

Post by TeMPOraL »

nsl73 wrote: post #18
kube-system wrote: post #4

> Because tomorrow, every piece of consumer electronics, even your lowly coffee machine or microwave or toaster, is going to have a 5G chip. That’s what the internet of things is about. If the Chinese can listen to you through your smartphone, they can listen to you through your toaster. Once we declare that 5G is going to allow China to listen to our communication, we will also have to ban all household electronics…

I can imagine a hundred products that can benefit from 5G, and I’m just one person. WiFi is great for high power products that stay within trusted networks, but not everything does stay within a trusted network. 5G can also offer a convince of being pre-configured out of the box to work.

It's funny, because I imagine what you consider "benefit" I'd consider a disaster. Wi-Fi at least usually connects to the network you control. Mobile connections hook up directly to the telecom provider, and if we're talking appliances and not smartphones, that means you have zero control over what the device is sending.

It's not just a matter of surveillance, but also a matter of further enabling shitty, user-hostile business models, where the physical hardware is only a proxy for a service.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#122

Post by TeMPOraL »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #10
kube-system wrote: post #4

> Because tomorrow, every piece of consumer electronics, even your lowly coffee machine or microwave or toaster, is going to have a 5G chip. That’s what the internet of things is about. If the Chinese can listen to you through your smartphone, they can listen to you through your toaster. Once we declare that 5G is going to allow China to listen to our communication, we will also have to ban all household electronics…

Yeah I ran across some scaremongers on Twitter 6 months ago who were going on about vaccines (??) And 5G. I had and still have no clue about that. As a real aside, networking everything does definitely have upsides and downsides. Upsides: seamless monitoring, remote control via api, integration across a house/car/phone, remote presence (never worry that door was open, or coffee pot is on, or garage door up). Downside…

> integration across a house/car/phone

While this sounds absolutely lovely on paper, here's the thing: I do not trust the free market to deliver on that. What will happen is just a bunch of silos where things sorta work together as long as you stick to a single vendor, but half of the things are garbage, as there's no point in making them good when the users are already captive due to buying into the one expensive thing that's best-in-class.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#123

Post by TeMPOraL »

mikem170 wrote: post #110
pm90 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Past recovery is not a guarantee for future. I am very surprised at how much faith people seem to have in the stability of advanced economies. What we face today is not simply an economic recession; it’s a pandemic which is actively preventing people from engaging in the system, and the reality is that we might face more such natural disasters in the future. We have seen civilizations get undone quite dramatically in…

Nobody in history is immune from disaster. The world goes on. One can remember to be humble, that us humans are but a small part of nature and subject to her whims. There is no perfect system to avoid catastrophe. Not yours, not mine. Humanity progresses. It will continue to do so. Sometimes the best way to fix something is to riot in the streets. I hope it doesn't come to that, but often it does. Every couple hundre…

> Nobody in history is immune from disaster. The world goes on. One can remember to be humble, that us humans are but a small part of nature and subject to her whims.

It's a nice sentiment to have when you aren't the one counting your formula stock and worrying how you'll take care of your 1 y.o. if shit hits the fan and there's no longer food to be found in the foreseeable future.

Taking things from perspective isn't as fun if there's a real possibility you'll end in the middle of it. Catastrophes and collapses are part of humanity's growth, but that's not going to be a consolation if your society starts disintegrating about you. Some people will survive such an event. Neither you nor me will likely be among those.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#124

Post by TeMPOraL »

lonelappde wrote: post #94
lazyasciiart wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There doesn't have to be a shortage for people to be hungry - just a breakdown in distribution, and we are already seeing that. And....no, people aren't lining up at food banks because they are "afraid to spend what they have". They mostly don't have anything to spend. Free food means they can afford the electricity bill, not that they can leave savings untouched.

Electricity is payment deferred during the pandemic.

Not every necessity is deferred. Also, getting food from the food bank may mean saving money that you'll need to buy food on a day when you can't get to the food bank.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#125

Post by TeMPOraL »

StephenAmar wrote: post #77

He is making lots of wild predictions about technology and automation. 5G in toasters? Come on. Is 5G really such a ground breaking technology that will change everything? Automating car manufacturing? Tesla tried and it failed them - https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/13/17234296/tesla-model-3-ro... No way Hyundai can do it tomorrow. Replacing janitors with Roombas?? What the hell is he talking about. Lots of promises…

> Is 5G really such a ground breaking technology that will change everything?

If it enables cheap enough connectivity - i.e. being able to place a 5G chip with a prepaid SIM card in a low-cost device - then absolutely, companies will jump at the opportunity to do everything from inventing bullshit "smart" "value-add" features, to selling surveillance to marketers.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#126

Post by thephyber »

dehrmann wrote: post #71
tootie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think some legitimate concerns are popping up with so many poorly-engineereed iot devices hitting the market. I think the fears are amplified due to simple lack of understanding. I'd propose we start certifying consumer electronics for data safety the same way we certify them for electrical safety. We should start recognizing some groups like UL or ETL for software.

Except security is more of a moving target, so I'd rather see 1-3 open-source embedded distros that commit to supporting hardware for 10 years with over-the-air updates. Fly-by-night device makers have made it clear they can't be trusted with this. I'd also like to see a standard for a IoT gateway so you can easily observe your IoT traffic. Finding a way to open this up would go a long way in building trust.

> I'd rather see 1-3 open-source embedded distros that commit to supporting hardware for 10 years with over-the-air updates

I don't see this happening unless a large company boostraps the funding for a distro like this, similar to how Microsoft boostrapped an open source election machine standard. "Over the air updates" requires the ability to pay for the bandwidth.

I do think there's an interesting synergy with your IoT gateway idea and Bit Torrent distribution of the Over the air updates.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#127

Post by mikem170 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #123
mikem170 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody in history is immune from disaster. The world goes on. One can remember to be humble, that us humans are but a small part of nature and subject to her whims. There is no perfect system to avoid catastrophe. Not yours, not mine. Humanity progresses. It will continue to do so. Sometimes the best way to fix something is to riot in the streets. I hope it doesn't come to that, but often it does. Every couple hundre…

> Nobody in history is immune from disaster. The world goes on. One can remember to be humble, that us humans are but a small part of nature and subject to her whims. It's a nice sentiment to have when you aren't the one counting your formula stock and worrying how you'll take care of your 1 y.o. if shit hits the fan and there's no longer food to be found in the foreseeable future. Taking things from perspective isn'…

My point in the quoted text was that nature is not sentimental. Sentiment doesn't matter. Disasters happen.

You can stockpile against the next disaster to the best of your ability, if you want. Collectively we can prepare for disasters, to the extant we agree on how to do so. And the world keeps going on, some are lucky, some are not, kind of like every other creature in nature. We are no different.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#128

Post by manicdee »

Aperocky wrote: post #22
kube-system wrote: post #4

> Because tomorrow, every piece of consumer electronics, even your lowly coffee machine or microwave or toaster, is going to have a 5G chip. That’s what the internet of things is about. If the Chinese can listen to you through your smartphone, they can listen to you through your toaster. Once we declare that 5G is going to allow China to listen to our communication, we will also have to ban all household electronics…

The article just want you to believe that 'The Chinese' would want to put a microphone with 5G into your toaster. So that they could listen to YOU through the said toaster, because whatever shit you said near the toaster is obviously very important to the Chinese. Is there a more moronic idea? If someone were to listen to you, wouldn't it be easier to say... do it through the phone?

Look at this guy who doesn’t understand social engineering and deep faking.

Or maybe you are the CCP counter intelligence office?

But then again why would anyone want to deep fake millions of people in a democratic country?

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#129

Post by contrapunter »

quacked wrote: post #79
contrapunter wrote: post #45

Can anyone explain why banning credit/usury wouldn't help in the longer term?

What, and force people reconcile with the real cost of owning material goods and receiving services? Sir, this is America.

I've also heard private debt jubilee put forward as a solution. Don't know which (if either) is preferable.

Re: Why our economy may be headed for a decade of depression

#130

Post by JamalW »

magicsmoke wrote: post #48
stepbeek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In spite of all these, US/North America is where you would rather be than say, Europe, Africa or even Asia. Why?

Lower population density and land that's only been tapped for a few centuries instead of millennia. When the famines and natural disasters start, it's going to hit the old world a lot harder than the new.

Assumes those continents don’t develop tech to combat climate change or famine. Assumes those continents don’t colonize other continents.
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